Shakespeare

18 March 2017

Sometimes when I write, other memories pop up . . . I was thinking about my Shakespeare entry from the 15th and remembered something funny!

We moved to Knoxville in 1999, and I was always on the lookout for something fun to do on our Saturday adventures. During the summer of 2003 we wound up in Market Square . . . stumbled upon a play already in progress . . . a Shakespeare production. I don't recall which plays they did that year, but for that and every year they've done a tragedy and a comedy each summer! I think we've missed one year!

ALL of the plays are done in the original language . . . the "King's English" so to speak . . . the players' southern accents typically winning over the real English accents. It's quite comical really . . . which adds to the entertainment in my opinion!

This summer they'll be doing Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Complete Works of Shakespeare (abridged). I love The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Obviously NOT written by the playwright, it is literally a parody of 37 of Shakespeare's plays scrunched into 97 minutes . . . by 3 actors . . . 36 of the plays compacted into the first act with Hamlet using up the time in the second act and then performed BACKWARD at the end! No two versions of this work is the same since the actors use modern language and current settings to determine some of the lines! AND they pull audience members into the play. Your mom was pulled in one time to play Ophelia . . . she was less than thrilled.

One summer we happened to be on the square . . . enjoying a play . . . to a very packed audience. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a man who, obviously drunk, was stumbling through the square. I don't know what made him stop, but stop he did . . . just to the right of the stage . . . turned to watch what was going on . . . swaying as he stood.

He kept looking from the audience to the stage when he suddenly blurted out "Will you people speak &$#!@(*^ English!?" This, of course, stopped the actors mid-sentence and everyone burst out laughing! The actual joke, however, was lost on the drunk as he wandered off to the other end of the square. It took a few minutes for everyone on stage to regain their composure . . . but they managed to finish up what they were doing without further incident.